UPDATED MAY 18: This hearing has been vacated. In an order issued late Tuesday, the judge asked for supplemental briefing from the parties. A new hearing date may be set once that briefing is complete.

Government Withholding Records About ‘Walled Off’ Law Enforcement Program

San Francisco – On Thursday, May 19, at 10 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a federal judge to let the public see records about “Hemisphere,” a massive drug enforcement database containing decades of telephone metadata.

Reporters at the New York Times uncovered the Hemisphere program in 2013. Funded by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, Hemisphere places AT&T employees inside law enforcement agencies to facilitate quick access to call records data—including who called who, when, and how long they spoke—typically without any court oversight. The New York Times found that investigators were encouraged to keep Hemisphere “under the radar” by using “parallel subpoenas” and then “walling off” Hemisphere information from public scrutiny.

EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn more about the program and how it was used by law enforcement, but the government released only a small amount of heavily redacted records in response. At Thursday’s hearing, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz will argue that the government must stop misusing public records law to hide information about Hemisphere.

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